


Constructions Invisible and Falling

by Colourofsaying



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Guilt, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 00:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colourofsaying/pseuds/Colourofsaying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is the guilt, a little, that encourages him to drive her away. He knows that she has always been torn between pride in her ability and shame at her appearance; he knows that Erik doesn’t care. Mutant and proud, he’s heard her say. You’re beautiful, she tells herself, tells Hank. He cannot undo what he did to her, but he can – mute it, a little. He can drive her away, even if he can never take away her love for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Constructions Invisible and Falling

The house is empty, except for Charles, and he thinks he might be excused for thinking she was a figment of his imagination. Just his size and of his kind, the perfect playmate. He’d had those before, but they’d never stood up to his touch. That’s why he reaches out his hand. When she takes it, he still doesn’t believe she’s real. No one real would want to live with him. He’d said it was kitchens and maids, but what he meant was, there’s no one here. That no one had been in the house with him for a very long time.

He thinks she might forgive him for brushing an illusory veneer of cleanliness across her eyes. He lifts the shine of windows from the halls of his memories, and what she sees and what he sees are two very different things. Someone comes by once a week to drop off food. He tells her his parents are on a business trip.

He doesn’t really remember his mother’s smell. All he has are photographs. Raven never asks him how she died. She only asked him for one thing he could barely say.

Charles thinks she would never have asked him if she hadn’t met his stepfather; it’s only after they meet that she makes him promise he’ll never read her mind. She’s afraid of him, now. In the kitchen, when they met, he was small and smiling and offered her his hand even though she was blue and breaking into his house and stealing his food. Then, she thought it was because he was kind and understood her. And he does, Charles knows her better than anyone alive or dead. Better than she knows herself. He wasn’t careful; he was old enough to think he was going mad. No one is careful when they think they’re going mad.

Now, she knows it’s because he’s never had to be afraid of anyone in his life. He wishes she hadn’t found out. Not like that. Never.

“He’s empty,” she accuses him. “You made him empty, Charles.”

“It was an accident,” he tells her, and she almost believes him before she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Really, it was an accident.”

“You don’t have accidents, Charles,” and she’s right, he doesn’t. Not anymore. He’s learned to be very, very careful. He’s trained himself into something like reliability – to touch the temple, and then to act. Not before. Never before. He’s ten years old. “Promise me you’ll never read my mind.”

He promises her. Because she’s real, and he’s already done enough damage. He takes the veil off, and she starts to cry.

“I tried to fix him,” Charles tells her afterwards, holding her in an awkward hug. He wants to trace the patterns of her skin under his hand, wants to know why her mutation is so beautiful and strange. There’s no reason for it. He thinks that makes it more, somehow. “I tried, and all that happened was that he knew what I’d done.”

Raven doesn’t ask him why he’d had his accident in the first place. If she’s figured it out, she doesn’t tell him, and he doesn’t read her mind. He promised. And as long as she belongs to him, he keeps that promise.

 

It is the guilt, a little, that encourages him to drive her away. He knows that she has always been torn between pride in her ability and shame at her appearance; he knows that Erik doesn’t care. Mutant and proud, he’s heard her say. You’re beautiful, she tells herself, tells Hank. He cannot undo what he did to her, but he can – mute it, a little. He can drive her away, even if he can never take away her love for him.

She doesn’t know that to take his hand, to defend him from their bitter comparisons and scorn, is the cruelest thing she has ever done to him. He had wanted a sister so very badly, someone like him, someone who would protect him and love him no matter what. He has one, now, and he cannot know if it is really because of their past. That is the problem. It is impossible to atone without regret, but he does the best he can.

Charles watches Raven blossom under Erik’s encouragement, and he will never allow himself to tell her he is proud of her. That she is the best sister anyone could ask for. That she is beautiful, and it radiates from her no matter what shape she wears. He cannot undo what he did to her, but he can ensure he will not do so to anyone else. He can take them away from himself, and if in the doing he loses all he’s ever wanted, it’s no more than he deserves. Erik will take care of her, and she’ll take care of Erik. They’ll be safe, together.

Safe from him, most of all. He could say to Erik, _I have been with you through all those years, now, and I agree – there is nothing you can do that he does not deserve_. He could agree with him, _we will never be safe, now that they know of our existence._ He could tell him _, yes, we do want the same things, and I will go with you, and we will try to find a way to be that we can both live with_. It is easy to hear Erik’s desires, and it would be easy to make him stay. Erik would be with him, and Raven would be there too, warm and loving and bright, and he could tell her that she was beautiful after all.

He doesn’t deserve that. Someone has to stay and clean up his stupid governmental mess, someone has to take responsibility.

At the time he’s frustrated and panicked, but later, he’s glad that Erik had Shaw’s helmet. He never wants to hurt anyone – he does all he can to keep from doing so, and all he can to keep from being involved in others’ pain. With Erik, though, it is an imperative. He must not hurt Erik, and so he’s glad of the helmet, because then, he couldn’t. He wants to believe that he never would, but for all that Raven tells him he never slips up, he’s not so self-deluded as that.

When Erik holds him, after he’s shot, when he pulls the bullet out, he wants to tell him that it’s fine, and nothing more than he deserves. Instead, he says “She didn’t do this; you did,” and watches the bottom drop out of Erik’s world.

**Author's Note:**

> This was in my documents as X-Men First Class (Charles Is A Guilt-Ridden Self-Flagellator). Basically, it came about because in the movie, Charles always manages to say exactly what he ought not when it really matters despite being telepathic, and the only thing I could think was that it had to be intentional.
> 
> The title is a stupidly layered reference to the Decemberists song "Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect," Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities, and Eileen Zhang's 1940s novella Love in a Fallen City. The reason for the song is in the second verse, found here: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/decemberists/hereidreamtiwasanarchitect.html. The reason for the novel is that, like Calvino's cities, Charles' sins are largely imaginary and also ridiculously ornate projections of a core concept, which, in this case, is his deep discomfort with his power and his terror of alienating people by using it (so he alienates them by not using it, he's not bright). The novella's title is alternatively translated as The Love That Felled A City, and is a reference in turn to a Chinese Helen-of-Troy. One of the themes of the book is that intimacy grows from desolation, and consequently, if there's no desolation, people will create it for the sake of that intimacy. Basically, destruction for love. So, yeah.
> 
> Many thanks to sanguineshadows, who very kindly beta'd this for me on short notice, and also helped with the title.


End file.
